Protection Strategy
By Ramesh Jaura
BONN, Jun 16 (IPS) - A senior UN official has exhorted
governments around the world to agree on an international
strategy to deal with global warming over the next five months
ahead of the climate change conference in November in The Hague,
the Netherlands.
Summing up a new round of five-day global climate change talks,
concluded here Friday, the Executive Secretary of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Michael Zammit
Cutajar said "steady progress" had been made in coming to
much-needed arrangements.
The Convention secretariat is based in Bonn, former West
Germany's capital that is now being developed into a Center for
International Co-operation (CIC).
The talks, Zammit Cutajar said, had concluded "after making
steady progress on arrangements for cutting developed country
emissions of greenhouse gases and for supporting the fuller
engagement of developing countries in climate change action."
The Bonn round - officially known as the 12th session of the
Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) and Subsidiary Body for
Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA) of the Conference of
Parties to the Climate Change Convention - was attended by
negotiators from 153 countries.
Altogether some 1,700 diplomats and representatives of non-
governmental, intergovernmental, and UN organisations took part.
Zammit Cutajar said in a statement issued in Bonn Friday: "The
emergence of negotiating texts here and the growing involvement
of ministers indicate that the talks are moving from detailed
technical matters to core political issues."
"There is still a great deal of work to do, however," he added.
"Political leaders world-wide now need to get fully engaged in
finalising an international strategy on global warming over the
next five months if we are to have an effective agreement in
November at The Hague climate change conference."
The UNFCCC's Executive Secretary sees "a promising sign of
increasing high-level political engagement" in that the next and
final set of preparatory meetings in Lyon, France, are to be
formally opened by French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
The Lyon meetings Sep. 11-15, Zammit Cutajar insisted, must
finalise as many issues as possible to leave time for a
comprehensive political deal in The Hague.
The Hague meeting, known as the Sixth Session of the Conference
of Parties to the Convention (COP-6), will take place Nov. 13
through 24. It is expected to draw 5,000 to 10,000 participants
and a large number of ministers.
The ongoing climate change talks are based on the 1998 Buenos
Aires Plan of Action, emerging from COP-5. It seeks to accelerate
implementation of the 1992 Convention by both developed and
developing countries while finalising the operational details of
the 1997 Kyoto Protocol agreed at COP-3.
The Protocol requires the developed countries to reduce their
collective greenhouse gas emissions by five percent below 1990
levels by the period 2008-2012.
Although adopted two-and-a-half years ago, the Protocol has not
yet entered into force because governments are awaiting agreement
on just how it will operate in practice.
Many governments expect to be in a position to ratify the
Protocol after finalising the Kyoto rulebook in The Hague. It
will enter into force and become legally binding after it has
been ratified by at least 55 Parties to the Convention, including
industrialised countries representing at least 55 percent of the
total 1990 carbon dioxide emissions from this group.
"The Kyoto rulebook must include accounting methods for national
emissions and emissions reductions, rules for getting credit for
forestry 'sinks' (in which new trees absorb carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere, thus offsetting emissions), a regime for
monitoring compliance with commitments, and procedures for the
Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation
and Emissions Trading systems," Zammit Cutajar said.
A comprehensive political package must also address issues
relating to the 1992 Convention, including technology transfer
and the special concerns of developing countries that are
particularly vulnerable to climate change or to the economic
consequences of emissions reductions by developed countries, the
UNFCCC Executive Secretary added.
This view was backed Friday by Germany's federal minister for
economic co-operation and development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.
"If we want to ensure the success of COP-6 in The Hague in
November, we must include the developing countries actively in
global climate protection and pay heed to their special
needs," Wieczorek-Zeul said in an official statement.
She pleaded strongly against using global climate change talks
for promoting the interests of the nuclear industry whose
representatives claimed during the Bonn talks that nuclear power
plants would ensure clean air.
"When we press the need for clean energy, we are talking about
renewable energies and a rational use of energy. In no case
should we include nuclear energy into the so-called Clean
Development Mechanism," she added.
Commenting on the state of climate negotiations, environmental
organisations had last Tuesday singled out the United States,
Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand as "the main culprits".
The NGOs including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World
Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)accused the five industrialised nations
of "working to undermine the effectiveness of the world's only
agreement to combat global warming".
In an analysis, they said the Kyoto Protocol was in danger of
being twisted to allow industrialised countries' emissions of
carbon dioxide and other health hazardous gases to increase by
15 to 20 percent.
"These governments are trying to create the impression that they
are moving ahead on climate policies while in reality, in the
smoke-filled backrooms of these negotiations, they are
systematically attempting to shred every last bit of
environmental integrity from the Kyoto protocol," Bill Hare of
Greenpeace International said.
Roda Verheyen of Friends of the Earth said: "These countries are
looking out for their own special interests and failing in their
duty to take action to prevent dangerous climate change.
We are disillusioned with governments and feel that we have a
responsibility to tell the public how bad it really is."
Mie Asaoka of Kiko Network of Japan added: "Just as surely as we
are seeing the world warm, and the first signs of climate
disasters ahead like the floods in Mozambique and the big
storms in Europe at the end of 1999, the main polluters are
trying to escape putting their own house in order."
(END/IPS/EN/raj/da/00)
SOURCE: Inter Press Service (IPS)
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